THE HOLYGITA, CHAPTER 06, DHYANA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF MEDITATION, VERSE NUMBER 07

THE HOLY GITA

CHAPTER 06

DHYANA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF MEDITATION

VERSE NUMBER 07

Text in Transliteration:

jitaatmanah  prasaantasya paramaatmaa samaahitah

seetoshnasukhaduhkheshu tathaa maanaapamaanayoh

Text in English:

The self-disciplined and serene man’s Supreme Self is constant in cold and heat, pleasure and pain, as also in honour and dishonour.

COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIDBHAVANANDA:

The good and evil that befall the yogi through the agency of the elements in nature and the living beings, do not in any manner affect him. the external world is not viewed by this man of self-mastery as benign and malign. Clarity of mind is his who is established in self-control. His mind reveals the supreme self enshrined in self-control. His mind reveals the Supreme Self enshrined in it. To the yogi this holy revelation is superior to everything else. Once contacted, this holy cognition becomes constant. Fluctuations in nature such as heat and cold, praise and censure do not affect him any more than the ravings of the delirious patient affect and the operating surgeon. Indifferent to everything else, the yogi is in constant communion with Supreme Self. This is the Sreyas sought after by the wise.

SRI RAMAKRISHNA AS QUOTED BY SWAMI SIDBHAVANANDA:

The mind that delight in its communion with God detaches itself easily from sense-pleasure. This is how the devotees get themselves emancipated. Contrary to this, the mind that delights in the mundane gets entangled.

COMMENTARY BY DR.S.RADHAKRISHNAN:

This is the state of blessedness of the erson who has established himself in unity with Universal Self. He is a jitaatman whose calm and serenity are not disturbed by the pains of the opposites. paramaatmaa samaadhitaah; Shankarar says that the Supreme Self regards him as His very self. The self in the body is generally absorbed by the world of dualities, cold and heat, pain and pleasure but when it controls the senses and masters the world, the self become free. The Supreme Self is not different from the self in the body. When the self is bound by the modes of prakriti or nature, it is called ksetrajna; when it is freed from them, the same self is called the Supreme Self. This is certainly the position of Advaita (non-dual) Vedaanta.

Those who are opposed to this view break up paramaatmaa into two words, param and aatmaa, and look upon the word param as an adverb qualifying the verb samaahitah.

Ramaanujar takes param as an adverb and holds that the self is sublimely realized.

Sridhara says that such a person becomes concentrated in his self. Aanandagiri holds that self of such a person becomes completely concentrated.

Sama-aahita: firmly directed to equality. This is not, however, the usual explanation.

COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDA:

The self-controlled yogi who is rooted in the Self keeps poise amidst the pairs of opposites (Dvandvas) or the alternating waves of cold and heat, pleasure and pain, honour and dishonour. When the Yogi has subdued his senses, when his mind is balanced and peaceful under all conditions, when he is not in the least influenced by the pairs of opposites, when he has renounced all actions, then the Highest Self really becomes his own Self. He attains to Self-realisation. As he rests in his own Self, he is ever serene or tranquil: he is not affected by the pairs of opposites, and he stands as adamant in the face of the changing conditions of Nature.            

Comments by the blogger:

The very terms self-disciplined and serene connote that this world is full of turbulent activities. We have senses. We have been provided senses in order to use the sense objects in this world to our benefit. Only a chosen few are able to use the sense object to the minimal. Such is their self-discipline. Such men and women use the sense objects just for the purpose of carrying out the daily activities so that they may devote the rest of the hours gained when their senses are deeply immersed in the inquiry about the mortality of this world objects and Self’s immortality. The world over such people have always been and they have for their object the single-minded goal to get disentangled from the chain of birth and death. They have rightly understood the greatness of the possibilities of their self and the danger of losing out to nature’s mundane joys and sorrows, pain and pleasure in the name of living a normal life. This plane is very temporary and ours in the object to always concentrate on the main chance which is what the realisation of the self is all about.

Once again we see Dr.S.Radhakrishnan speaking about the Universal Self. This universe made of five elements has its own self which is God indeed. When the numberless planets and stars are continuously going around their charted path in the milky ways of the Universe, and numberless activities are wrought out by a single human being in the space of a single minute, God remains uninfluenced by the activities of the millions or trillions of people and other lives in the animal kingdom. He just remains a mute witness to all the activities of the world’s planets and the lives on the earth. When a girl is being raped by a handful of beasts and the girl cries out His name He remains a mute witness even as He remains a mute witness to the eight hours’ continuous meditation by a yogi in the Himalayan cave. He is not the dispenser of fruits of good actions and bad actions. All this is done by His prakriti or nature. But He impregnates this world just by his presence. He is an ultimate creative writer. He writes out the lives of the characters through His prakrity without any personal stake and remains ever Supreme in His scintillating Self. The more we can act in tune with that Supreme Universal Self the greater is the gain and peace of mind in this sensual world. The present world and life on the earth is mostly a glorification of the sensual activities. Man has no time for God. There are innumerable sensual pleasures created by Man and at the click of the button he can have the world on his hands. There is no time for serenity. Any person who remains calm is seen and understood as having losing out on the main chance. Such men are pitied. Indeed pitiable has become our lives. There has never been so many deviations in the history of this world for Human kind. It is humanly impossible to remain calm and collected and be satisfied with one’s few possessions and keep your mind constantly on God. Even our godmen have become very costly and we need to have much wealth and money to go to them for the purpose of learning yoga.

This is why it is necessary to chant both inwardly and outwardly the holy names of the Lord. For every religious person there are Holy Names of the Lord. It is only by selecting a name and chant constantly man can hope to get that serene state of mind as adumbrated in this verse.